Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Textual criticism of the New Testament is the identification of textual variants. or different versions of the New Testament, whose goals include identification of transcription errors, analysis of versions, and attempts to reconstruct the original text.
We have textual traditions, or families of texts, which grew up in a certain region. For example, we have the Alexandrian text-type, which Westcott and Hort called the Neutral text that came from Egypt. Then, there is the Western text-type, which came from Italy and Gaul as well as North Africa and elsewhere. There was also the Caesarean text-type, which came from Caesarea and is characterized by a mixture of Western and Alexandrian readings. The Byzantine text-type, also called the Majority Text, came from Constantinople (i.e., Byzantium).
Early on, some New Testament textual scholars pretty much mocked Westcott and Hort (WH) believing that they were overzealous, seeing it as bias too, at least until the 1950s. WH released their critical text in 1881, Hort said that Vaticanus preserved “not only a very ancient text but a very pure line of a very ancient text.” (Westcott and Hort 1882, 251) Later scholars argued that Vaticanus was a scholarly recension: a critical revision or edited text. However, …
Almost ALL modern Bibles since 1881 are based on the Westcott and Hort Greek New Testament because the 2012 Nestlé Åland Greek New Testament is 99.5% the same as the Westcott and Hort 1881 Greek New Testament. Therefore, it must be asked, are ALL modern Bibles based on a text by Occultists or unbelievers? Before delving into whether Westcott and Hort were Occultists or unbelievers, let us look at their work first.
Fenton John Anthony Hort FSA, known as F. J. A. Hort, was an Irish-born theologian and editor, with Brooke Foss Westcott, of a critical edition of The New Testament in the Original Greek.
BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT "renown for [his] studies of New Testament manuscripts and the publication of their critical edition of the New Testament. In 1881, after twenty-eight years of work, Westcott and Hort published the text of the Greek New Testament (with an introduction and appendixes) titled The New Testament in the Original Greek." (Wegner 2006)